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Billy Holzberg

Dr Billy Holzberg

Lecturer in Social Justice

Biography

Billy Holzberg is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Social Justice. His research, teaching and public engagement draw on transnational, liberatory, and collaborative queer feminist approaches.

Prior to joining King's College London, he was a Fellow in Gender and Sexuality at the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics, where he also completed his PhD in the Department of Gender Studies.

Research

Billy is broadly interested in the sexual and affective life of power. His research grapples with the role that sexual desire and emotional attachments play in fuelling social inequalities, nationalisms, and neo-fascist politics today and how such dynamics might be counteracted. In exploring these questions, he draws on and contributes to work in queer studies, transnational feminism, affect theory, postcolonial critique, and critical migration and border studies. His work is informed by cultural, visual, and media analysis and he is interested in bridging innovative methodologies and reading practices between the humanities and the social sciences.

His first monograph Affective Bordering: The Emotional Politics of Race, Migration, and Deservingness (Manchester University Press) explores the interplay between affect and migration control, revealing how emotions work to reinforce racial and national hierarchies. Taking the construction of migration as crisis in Germany as its case study, the book brings together queer feminist theories of affect with postcolonial border studies offering an incisive perspective on the reproduction and contestation of borders in today’s world.

He is working on two other projects, both of which are collaborative in nature. The first project, developed with Aiko Holvikivi and Tomás Ojeda, focuses on current attacks on ‘gender’ and so-called ‘gender ideology’. This work has culminated in the edited volume Transnational Anti-Gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attacks (Palgrave) which brings together interventions from various geopolitical locations examining anti-gender politics in relation to coloniality, racial capitalism, and rising authoritarianism across the globe.

The second project focuses on contemporary cultural negotiations of sex. This work charts the move to representations of ‘bad’ – awkward, shameful, and non-normative – sex in popular culture and he has recently started work on the manuscript Bad Sex: Affect, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary TV (Bloomsbury) co-written with Jacqueline Gibbs and Aura Lehtonen.

Billy's work is insistently interdisciplinary and has appeared in journals like Body and Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Feminist Media Studies, International Affairs, and Sociology. He is on the editorial board of the Sociological Review, sits on the steering committee of Queer@King’s, and has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City and at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.

Teaching

Billy is deputy programme lead for the BA in Social Sciences where he currently convenes modules on ‘The Everyday Politics of Gender and Sexuality’, ‘Media, Culture and Society’ and ‘Civil and Political Rights’.

PhD Supervision

Billy is happy to supervise and support PhD projects on queer theory; transnational feminism; migration, border, and nationalism; the study of affect and emotion; and/or cultural and media analysis. 

He looks forward to receiving proposals for the PhD in Interdisciplinary Policy Studies.

    Research

    women at wokr
    Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR)

    The Centre for Public Policy Research is an interdisciplinary research centre research developing critical analyses of social change and social in/justice in education and other policy arenas, sectors and contexts to inform national and international policy debate, social activism, and personal, professional and organisational learning.

    Q@K banner
    Queer@King's

    Centre for research and teaching in gender and sexuality studies and a hub for collaborative work with queer activists, artists, and communities.

    LGBTQ+ policymaking
    LGBTQ+ policymaking in the UK

    Establishing an interdisciplinary network of academic, policymaking, and civil society stakeholders to address the policy needs of the UK’s LGBTQ+ population.

    Project status: Ongoing

    Events

    27Nov241127 Transnational Anti-Gender Politics book launch

    Transnational Anti-Gender Politics book launch

    Exploring how anti-gender mobilisations work as a transnational formation shaped by the legacies of colonialism, racial capitalism, and resurgent...

    06MarRetelling migration

    Affective Bordering: Emotional Migration Control and the Threat of ‘Remigration’

    This talk delves into the emotional dynamics driving contemporary border practices.

    Please note: this event has passed.

    04Mayrefugee_promo

    Affective bordering: hope in contemporary migration politics

    Billy Holzberg discusses the politics of ‘affective bordering’ through the case study of hope.

    Please note: this event has passed.

      Research

      women at wokr
      Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR)

      The Centre for Public Policy Research is an interdisciplinary research centre research developing critical analyses of social change and social in/justice in education and other policy arenas, sectors and contexts to inform national and international policy debate, social activism, and personal, professional and organisational learning.

      Q@K banner
      Queer@King's

      Centre for research and teaching in gender and sexuality studies and a hub for collaborative work with queer activists, artists, and communities.

      LGBTQ+ policymaking
      LGBTQ+ policymaking in the UK

      Establishing an interdisciplinary network of academic, policymaking, and civil society stakeholders to address the policy needs of the UK’s LGBTQ+ population.

      Project status: Ongoing

      Events

      27Nov241127 Transnational Anti-Gender Politics book launch

      Transnational Anti-Gender Politics book launch

      Exploring how anti-gender mobilisations work as a transnational formation shaped by the legacies of colonialism, racial capitalism, and resurgent...

      06MarRetelling migration

      Affective Bordering: Emotional Migration Control and the Threat of ‘Remigration’

      This talk delves into the emotional dynamics driving contemporary border practices.

      Please note: this event has passed.

      04Mayrefugee_promo

      Affective bordering: hope in contemporary migration politics

      Billy Holzberg discusses the politics of ‘affective bordering’ through the case study of hope.

      Please note: this event has passed.